My Thrifty Retirement - Week 10

 

We began the week with the BIG PURGE of my youngest daughter's bedroom.  Is it wrong that I've been eagerly looking forward to this?  OMG!  Teenager's bedrooms are abominable.  I am so proud of her though.  She purged a HUGE bag of clothing, filled up another bag with trash and loaded half of our big blue recycle bin with papers and packaging.  I did a GOB of laundry.  Her room is clean, I have more dishes and silverware in the kitchen now and we can see her floor.  We won't talk about what was under the bed.  It was exhausting, but we both agree it was very satisfying and worth it.  The first big step in getting ready for college has been completed.  I'm very proud of her.  She parted with A LOT of stuff and I didn't even have to nudge her.

 

I pulled all of the veggie scraps from the freezer added a few more and made broth

I let it cook all day, strained it and put it in cottage cheese containers for the freezer

The girls used to share this bedroom (I won't show it out of respect for privacy) and future plans are to update it (I'll be showing it then) and return it to a room both girls can use when they come home for visits.  I'm very much looking forward to revamping it for them and sprucing things up.  New trim to match the rest of the house, fresh paint, new carpet and new bedding.  It will be a really nice place for them and any other guests to enjoy.

 

Our first stop was to Cash & Carry for some well priced bulk buy items

And then Winco for produce and a few things we didn't really need 😉

On Tuesday I did my big grocery shop for the month.  With the price of gas now over $5 a gallon I am going to limit my driving as much as possible.  I went to Cash & Carry for some bulk items that were on sale - 10# spaghetti ($7.25), two 5# bags of frozen veggies($5.49 & $5.85), 5# ground pork sausage ($9.97) and 5# grated fresh parmesan cheese($14.90).  All of these items are for our long term storage.  While there I also picked up a six count package of romaine hearts ($3.65) for the same price as a three count package sells for at the grocery store.

 

I pressure canned potatoes & carrots in salted water for my long term food storage

I vacuumed sealed the spaghetti and a 10# bag of penne I had purchased a few months ago

I pressure canned fourteen pints of potatoes and carrots in salted water.  I had a 10# bag of potatoes (FREE offer from Albertsons) in the garage and now that the weather has warmed up our garage is cool but not cool enough for cold storage so I wanted to get those preserved before they went bad.  I peeled and cut up a 2# bag of carrots ($1.28) and did ten jars of potatoes with carrots and 4 just potatoes.  I also canned the pork sausage I bought into sixteen half pint jars.  It felt really nice to get some canning done.

 

I divided frozen veggies into smaller meal sized portions

Double bagged and ready for the freezer

I divided up the frozen peas & carrots and the whole green beans I bought into individual meal size portions and got them into the freezer.  I plan to repackage the parmesan in two cup portions and for the freezer as well.  One bag of these smaller bags of parmesan is the perfect size for a pint jar which I have a repurposed parmesan container lid on and we use that as our perfect little parmesan dispenser.  I've saved a lot of those lids over the years.  They fit the regular mouth jars nicely and are very handy for my dried herbs and spices.

 

I pressure canned more half pint jars of meat for my long term food storage

I patched a couple holes in a two gallon Ziploc bag with clear packing tape and used it to cover a box of half pint jars to keep them clean.  Two gallon bags are expensive and a bit hard to come by at times so I was glad to repurpose this one rather than tossing it into the landfill.  I also had washed out four gallon size Ziploc bags to reuse and those came in very handy for organizing and better protecting the veggies and cheese I put up in the freezer.

 

Instant "grass"

Saturday was a big day!  I got the new "grass" installed in our yard.  I'm so happy with it and love how it looks.  My yard is really starting to look like a yard now.  The yard of my dreams!  Along with the grass install I was able to finish up the new flower bed that was made after we moved our fence.  I transplanted three vincas from the largest flower bed to sit along the fence in the back of this bed and then planted a couple a new plant I had picked up at Fred Meyer when I was out.  Then I added the last two bags of bark mulch I had.  It could use another bag of mulch but that will need to wait for the time being.  Nonetheless, it looks really pretty.

 

My daughter heartily approved

I kept meals relatively simple. I tried a Korean beef recipe I found online (very good), made pasta sauce with spaghetti, and we ate all of the leftovers as well as leftovers from the week before.  By the time Saturday rolled around we had finished everything up and on Sunday I started over once again.

 

It is coming along!

Another happy, healthy and productive week of retirement is in the books.  I hope you are all doing well.  Let me know how your week was.